


touch her again, and i'll kill you

by kattyshack



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (and for the fuckplot), (but also for LOVE), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Cousin Incest, F/M, Half-Sibling Incest, Jealousy, Marriage of Convenience, Possessive Behavior, Sexual Content, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-11-04 13:12:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10991640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/pseuds/kattyshack
Summary: This bastard boy would not dare to dishonor her so. His own half-sister, Petyr thinks with a smirk. What does it matter, what may be brewing between them? A man of Ned Stark’s blood would never indulge himself so sinfully. Petyr will make sure of it.alternative titles: -the fuckplot fic, and -the grand marriage conspiracy(inspired by shots from the season 7 trailer)





	1. down in the crypts

Petyr follows Ned Stark’s ghost down to the crypts.

Truly, that’s what the boy is. He may have a heartbeat and a blade, but Jon Snow is Eddard incarnate: Brooding beneath the weight of the world on his shoulders, unflinching in his sense of honor, duty, and propriety… But Petyr has seen how Jon Snow’s honor falters. He has seen this king crumble as soon as she steps into a room, turning towards her before they so much as lock eyes, as though he has memorized the vibrations in the ground when she walks upon it.

She steps into his orbit, and Petyr watches, frozen, as though he is seeing only a memory. It is Ned Stark he sees, holding out a hand for his lady wife. For Catelyn.

Jon Snow offers his hand the same way, and Sansa places her fingers in his palm as though they belong.

But no—this bastard boy would not dare to dishonor her so. His own half-sister, Petyr thinks with a smirk. What does it matter, what may be brewing between them? A man of Ned Stark’s blood would never indulge himself so sinfully. Petyr will make sure of it.

The torchlight flickers in the underground, flames dancing pale gold and painting shadows on the walls. There is nary a sound—not even the fierce winter winds outside can be heard in this sanctuary where the dead sleep and tell no secrets—and Jon turns towards the sound of Petyr’s footsteps caressing the stone floors.

“Baelish.” The boy’s voice is curt, his eyes guarded.

His expression only makes a low chuckle rumble in the depths of Petyr’s gut. If only this esteemed Northern king had thought to guard his gaze when it lingered too long on Sansa—her eyes, her lips, tracing the curve of her tits and the dip in her waist. How this baseborn fool longs to feel the jut of her hip bones in his filthy hands, Petyr knows. Only a simpleton would not recognize the clouds that darken Jon Snow’s eyes when he looks upon his lady sister—and he is always looking.

“Your Grace.” Petyr’s voice slithers out between his lips in a whisper that sets Jon’s spine straight. “I’ve come to discuss a matter of great interest—a request, if you will.”

His accompanying smile is cold, and Jon does not match it.

“War is upon us,” Jon reminds him, the words edged in incredulity, “and you come to ask favors of me?”

“The matter of Lady Sansa’s hand is urgent in its own right,” Petyr says, “is it not?”

He is pleased to see the clouds cast in Jon Snow’s eyes—not in desire or lust this time, but in an unadulterated rage that Petyr has provoked. Because he will not lose, not again, not this time; he will not relinquish his Tully bride to a man unworthy of her. And he wants there to be no doubt in Jon Snow’s mind who will be having Sansa in their bed.

“She is a fine woman, your sister,” Petyr continues. His eyes flick to the fists Jon has balled at his sides, then back to the fury etched in the lines of his face. “Soon you will not be able to ignore the petitions for her hand, Your Grace. Lords from all across the Seven Kingdoms will vie for the attentions of such a woman—highborn and beautiful, with a claim to a kingdom all her own. But I can assure you, that no man will love her as I do.”

 _She is a fine woman, your sister._ The words echo like an angry spirit in Jon’s head. _I look forward to having her back in my bed._

He had not killed Ramsay Bolton. He had been close, he had wanted to—oh, how he would have ripped the man’s head from his very shoulders—but Bolton had not been his to finish. He had been Sansa’s, and Jon had given him up to her gladly.

For her, he would have done anything.

But here Baelish stands, voice dripping with words of love, as though he could dare look upon Sansa and think for a moment that he deserved her hand—her heart, her body, her claim? Jon has seen the way Petyr Baelish has devoured Sansa with his greedy gaze; he knows what this man wants, and he would sooner die a thousand more deaths before he let Baelish have her.

“Surely you must see the sense in the match?” Petyr goads him further. “It is, by all accounts, advantageous. Sansa would lay claim to Winterfell and the Vale alike. I can make her a powerful woman, Jon. Nothing would please me more than to take Lady Sansa’s hand and ensure she be powerful, and cherished, and well-loved—”

Jon’s hands itch to hurt, to break, and so he takes Petyr by the scruff of his cloak and slams him into the stone wall of the crypts. On instinct, Petyr’s own hands scramble to free his throat of Jon’s grip, but the boy has all the leverage and the rage to set the entire North aflame.

“ _Don’t_ talk about her.” Jon’s voice is a growl, low and feral in his throat. His fingers tighten their hold and he’s satisfied by Baelish’s short, gasping breaths. “You sold her to the Boltons and now you want me to sell her to you?”

Petyr’s skull cracks against the stone, jostled by Jon’s furious grip. He cannot speak, he can hardly breathe, but he chokes and he smirks because he _knows_ —he knows what Jon Snow wants. He is nothing more than a bastard boy masquerading as so much more, but he is a man like any other. He pines and he lusts and he will never, _ever_ have her.

“You don’t talk about her,” Jon says again—orders it, _demands_ it, so there can be no argument. “You don’t speak to her, or _look_ at her—”

“But you will,” Petyr manages to croak out. Jon’s grip slackens only slightly, but it’s enough for Petyr to breathe and pour poison in the boy’s ears. “I’ve seen you. You’re just like me, Jon Snow. You’re just like every man who’s laid eyes on her.”

He licks his lips, and his laugh is nothing more than a rasp of breath. “I know how men think, even honorable men like you.”

A flurry of images flash before Jon. The smug upturn of Petyr Baelish’s mouth is temporarily blurred, fading into shadow, and all Jon sees is light.

The winter sun in her hair, painting it in hues of deepest red to finest gold. The firelight from the hearth dancing upon her skin. Candlelight in her eyes, twinkling like the Narrow Sea at twilight. Her slim white hand on his arm, the skin unblemished unlike the scars that mar her back—evidence of all she’s been through, all she’s endured, and yet the gods had smiled and brought her back to him. _Back_ , where he never thought she belonged until she was there: sobbing into his shoulder, smiling at his laughter, shouting in his face, searching his eyes for what was so plain to see.

Jon feels it in the deepest valleys of his bones, and Petyr Baelish had seen it. He knows what Jon will hardly admit to himself, and he means to taunt him for it.

Baelish’s face swims back into view, and Jon digs once more into his throat.

“Keep your distance.” He bites the words so they are more a wolf’s growl than a king’s command. “I’ll know if you come near her. I’ll know if you look at her, or so much as think about her. And if you _ever_ touch her again… I’ll kill you.”

All at once, Petyr is alone in the crypts. His chest heaves in sharp, ragged breaths, but all the same he can hear Jon Snow’s footfalls echo down the long, flickering light of the corridor. Petyr massages his throat, recalling that once, so many years past, when Ned Stark had thrown him against the outside of his brothel to defend his lady wife’s honor. Jon Snow had the same look in his eye—all ferocity, all devotion to the woman who Petyr had dedicated himself to and yet could never win.

Jon Snow’s fading footsteps make the crypt walls shudder, and an unbidden thought worms itself into Petyr’s mind:

Sansa Stark had once been promised to a prince. And this boy walks like a king.


	2. behind her chamber door

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: aaaaaand we have descended into utter, unabashed fuckplot territory. buckle. up. babes. you’ve been warned (or like maybe titillated? idk) 
> 
> dedicated to kingsnow, whose shitposts inspired the smutty continuation of this fic (which was written to the tune of banks’ “lovesick,” also courtesy of lizzie)

It’s a mistake to let the man get to him.

“Only a fool would trust Littlefinger,” Sansa had once told him. Jon tries to hold onto the memory of those words, tries to convince himself that the man only meant to divide for his own gain. And it had been so clear, all along, what that gain was:

He wants Sansa. And Jon will not let him have her.

He will not even let _himself_ have her. He would not dispose of her for Baelish’s use—nor any man’s, for that matter. He’d promised to protect her; he had sworn with his new life, his reclaimed soul, that no one would touch her without killing him first. But now… Heavens above and hells below, how he wants to touch her. How can he protect her now, when he so badly wants what he won’t allow anyone else to take from her? Who is he, to think that he should be the one taking from her? To give to her, even if he’d give her anything— _everything_ —who is he to offer it?

How can he even entertain such thoughts? Jon lies in his chambers in the dead of night, staring unseeingly at the stone ceiling and trying to quell the monsters that have taken up residence in his mind—monsters that paint dreams of Sansa across his vision:

Fathomless blue eyes locked on his, pretty pink mouth parted for him, hair like fire spread over his furs. Alabaster limbs that stretch and curl like the branches of the weirwood trees he prays beneath, and _oh_ , how he would worship her... The arch of her spine as she writhes beneath him in his mind’s eye, as he encourages her hips to move with his body, his hands, his mouth—gods, but has anyone touched her like he would touch her?

But he won’t, Jon reminds himself so forcefully, but never enough to purge himself. _I can’t touch her._ He can’t. He won’t he won’t he won’t—

Petyr Baelish is not a man to be trusted, and yet his slithering taunts haunt Jon with ghosts he cannot shake:

_I’ve seen you. You’re just like me, Jon Snow._

I’m not, I’m not, I’m better than that—

_You’re just like every man who’s laid eyes on her._

I won’t touch her, I’d never touch her—

_I know how men think…_

I don’t dream of her, I don’t crave her, want her, need her—

_Even honorable men like you._

He suffers through the voices, day after day, night after night, until the hours meld together and time is as unreal as the war that’s coming.

But war is upon them, and Jon cannot keep fighting one within himself as well.

Night after night, he struggles into restless sleep, bodiless voices hissing in his ear as he twists his hands in the sheets to keep from taking himself in hand at the thought of her. Soft skin, soft hair, soft smiles, soft sighs… He does not let himself have her, not even in dreams. He fights and he fights and he _fights_ …

Until, one night, he simply stops.

He had not meant to—he’d never mean to—but something within him snaps and he is as tired of fighting as the day the Red Woman brought him back to life.

His eyes catch Sansa’s, and he does not want this life if he can’t have it with her.

He is tired. He is finished. He doesn’t want to think—he wants to have, conquer, give, take, possess, he wants to free himself of honor and guilt and for _once_ he wants to have what he wants without letting his bloody _honor_ stop him.

What is his pride compared to the ache in his chest when she is near and he can’t bring her closer?

It is nothing nothing _nothing_ , and he is nothing without her: He is not Jon Snow, bastard son of Eddard Stark. He is not the former Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. He is not a hero risen and reborn. He is only a man who wants his woman, and by the gods that have forsaken him, he will _have_ her.

He paces her chambers, and turns on the spot when the door creaks to announce her presence.

“Where have you been?” he demands, just as Sansa wants to know, “What are you doing here?”

There is a moment, a beat, and Jon clears his throat before answering. “I wanted to know where you were.”

Sansa lifts an eyebrow and pulls her hand away from the door. It creaks again as it settles against the frame, and Jon has never felt more alone with her than he does now.

“So instead of looking for me elsewhere, you decided to lurk in my bedroom?”

His smile is small and a bit self-loathing. “I thought you’d come here eventually. Thought it was best to wait.”

Her footsteps are light against the flagged stone floor, their echoes pairing with the crackle of the fire in the grate. They are soft sounds of comfort, familiarity. Home. He has felt so at home with her that even her walk warms his chest so acutely it’s as though he’s swallowed a lit match. How can it be that someone who had always felt so apart from him, now feels like the only piece he’s missing? Nothing in this new life had felt right. He shouldn’t have had this second chance at all; it’s not right, unnatural, a curse masquerading as a miracle.

And yet… Jon had taken those resurrected breaths, and Sansa had come to him as though she’d been waiting for him to breathe this new life—a stolen life, a purposeless life, until she had ridden into Castle Black and gave him something to fight for again.

Now, she stands before him, a concerned crease in her pretty brow. The back of her hand brushes his forehead, his cheek, as though checking for a fever.

“Is everything alright?”

Jon nods, but his eyes never leave hers. He should look away, collect himself, but he’d found it impossible to tear his gaze from her for too long, lest she disappear. Lest he finds that he’s dreamed it all. Lest someone else take her from him.

“Were you with Baelish?” he hears himself ask, without having had any intention of doing so. Something clutches his gut and twists it.

“I was.” Sansa frowns when Jon takes her wrist, stopping her hand’s inspection of his face. She wonders if he can feel what he does to her pulse as it races races races… “You don’t trust him, do you?”

“You told me not to.”

Her smile is just as small as his was, but Jon can’t read it near as easily. “I meant you don’t trust him with _me_.”

“Of course I don’t.” The knife twists in Jon’s gut, deep and insistent, and his grip tightens on Sansa’s wrist in response. “Seven hells, Sansa, how could I trust him with you? He sold you to the Boltons. Ramsay had you because of _him_. And for what? What exactly are his plans for you now?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing—” But her gaze flickers away, and Jon knows.

“We have to trust each other, Sansa,” he reminds her. He drops her wrist, worried he might frighten her with the intensity of his hold. He takes a step back, worried he might take her then and there. “Remember? I promised I’d protect you. Now I need you to promise that you’ll let me.”

Sansa bristles. “I can handle Littlefinger, Jon—”

“Can you?” he bites back. “Don’t you see the way he looks at you? Don’t you know what he wants?”

 _I do_ , says that little voice in the back of his mind. _And I won’t let him._

“Of course I know what he wants!” Sansa scoffs. “Do you think I’m as stupid as I was when we were children? I’m not blind, Jon, I can see what he wants perfectly clear!”

“So _what_ , then?” Jon tries not to shout, but his voice hitches higher and rougher. The fire behind Sansa blazes and sets her aglow and his gut is twisting twisting twisting. “What’s your plan, if you won’t trust me? You’re going to trust him again instead? He’s broken every oath he’s ever made to you, and I would _never_ betray you like that. I’d never tell you I’d keep you safe and then leave you alone. I’d never give you away, least of all to the likes of _Lord Baelish_ —”

“What?” she interjects. “Is that what he said, that he wants your blessing?”

“He wants my _permission_ ,” Jon corrects. “He petitioned for your hand, as though I’d agree to it just because it would be _advantageous_ …”

He swears under his breath and Sansa says nothing. His eyes are on her feet now, afraid to look back into hers and see anything but disgust at the notion. She doesn’t want Baelish, of course she doesn’t, Jon thinks furiously, and yet he can’t quite convince himself of it. Sansa is a creature of duty, she always had been, and what could be more dutiful than to marry the man who had given them an army?

_No. No, I won’t let her, I can’t—_

It’s absurd, it’s mad to think that Sansa would give herself to a man like Petyr Baelish. So he’d given her an army—he’d owed her at least that much after leaving her in Ramsay Bolton’s hands. Sansa knows it and Jon does, too, but there is a new, wild fear that has taken root and won’t let him go.

 _It doesn’t matter who she wants_ , that damnable voice hisses. _It will never be you._

Of their own accord, for Jon isn’t ready to do so, his eyes leave the floor for her face, searching for what his heart demands is there—because he needs it, wholly, desperately, he needs her to ache the way he does. He needs to know that he is not mad or depraved or wrong. He needs to know that this is worth the price of his honor. He needs her to want him back.

His gaze locks onto hers—shifting shadows, a spark of blue, darkened in the low light of her chambers, but still Jon catches something in the flicker of dying firelight.

“Jon?” She says his name soft and low. Her fingers reach towards his face again, this time unsure; they extend only to curl back into a fist, and then stretch again to touch the rough lines of his jaw. He shouldn’t, but he’s already made up his mind that he will, so he takes her wrist once more and leans into the touch he’d barely allowed himself to dream of until now.

What has he been fighting for all this time, if not for her?

“Sansa,” he says on a whisper. His eyes flick from hers to her mouth and back again, and he wonders if she sees the question that he won’t ask aloud.

Her eyelids flutter and something like a sigh escapes her mouth. When she steps closer, their chests brush and Jon can feel the jump of her heart against his own. His free hand traces the dip between her collarbone and he swallows the final vestiges of his fear, his doubt; they don’t matter— _nothing_ matters, nothing but her and him and the space between them that he closes with half a step, a hitch of breath, one catch of his lips upon hers.

She tastes like the heaven he thought he’d see when he died.

But his brothers had stabbed the life from him, and there had been nothing after. Now, Sansa kisses him, and gives him a life in which he can see a future full of them.

She tears her mouth away—gods, but she’d given him heaven for a moment and she’d taken it away just as quickly—and she searches his face with wide, dark eyes and parted lips that Jon wants to plunge between for the rest of his days, for the entirety of another resurrected life.

“We can’t do this,” she says without believing it. Her hands map his chest, and his drop to trace her waistline while his mouth takes her neck. Her lovely, long neck, where her pulse skips when she continues, “It can’t go further than tonight—”

Jon’s fingers bite into the dip and curve of her torso. He growls into her throat, but it’s not enough to drown out that voice in his head that tells him _You can’t have her_.

_I can, if she wants me._

Her hips roll into his, and he knows that she does.

“I’ll find a way,” he swears, murmuring it into her skin. He follows the line of her throat up to her chin, to silence her fears with the way that he wants her. Because of course he wants her. He tastes her and vows again, “I’ll find a way. I promise you.”

He cups her jaw, his mouth so hungry on hers that the kiss is wet and sloppy and more teeth than lips. But he doesn’t care—he can’t care—not when she is warm and sweet and reciprocating in such a way that he knows she must have thought of this as often as he has. As often, as desperately, as feverishly… His breath hitches in something like a gasp when she kisses him harder, and he responds in kind.

He should be tender, but he tears apart the laces of her gown and he owns her skin. He touches her everywhere all at once, memorizes every line of her body before she is even bare before him because he can’t wait, he could never wait, and yet waiting’s all he has done.

Not anymore.

Jon grips the back of her thighs and lifts her as though she weighs nothing, guiding her to wrap her legs about his waist, and he carries her to her bed— _their_ bed; Jon will not go back to his own after tonight.

His hands span her skin, from her hips to her abdomen, her thighs to her knees, and back again; he devours her by touch, mapping out the path his tongue will take. So consumed is he by the vision before him—the woman he wants, panting in time with his own need as she tugs at his jerkin and then the buttons of his shirt, and he rips her gown down the middle so he can see her, cherish her, take her—

 _“Sansa,”_ he groans, and he feels alone with her. He fans his fingers over her cunt and she whimpers his name, and she feels just the same.

The door creaks, and they are so overtaken by their own labored breaths that neither of them notice the sound.

Petyr Baelish watches the fire paint them in golden light upon the bed. Jon’s shadow stretches long, casting his shape upon Sansa. A keening noise rips from her throat when his fingers slip inside her. Her own tangle in his hair as he plants his mouth on her neck, her breasts, down the valley of her stomach…

He is at her center, and Sansa twists her hand, her hips, to bring him closer. Jon’s groan reverberates around the stone walls, and Petyr sees the eager jerk of his head as his mouth takes her cunt as though it belongs to him.

There is a dark, ugly knot that unfurls in Petyr’s gut at the sight, at the sound of Sansa moaning her bastard brother’s name while he fucks her with his mouth. And yet, a smirk curls his lips, for the King in the North has succumbed to the weakness that is between his sister’s legs. This great, mighty hero is no different than the rest of them, no matter what he would have his people believe.

Jon holds her hips, thrusting his tongue into Sansa’s cunt, sucking her clit to make her writhe and sob his name— _Jon Jon Jon_ —and every time he nearly comes. He joins a finger, then two, with his ministrations; he wants to make her scream and then he wants to be inside of her, wants to drive his cock into her and make her his. His thoughts whirl dark and uninhibited and he doesn’t care what becomes of him, as long as he can give himself to her first.

Petyr watches as Sansa pulls her bastard brother up her body—that lithe, half-naked body that Jon covers with his own now—and she takes his mouth like she’s been starving for it. Her hand snakes down between them and his follows.

“Sansa.” Her name is nothing but a desperate, damp pant upon her lips. Jon’s cock is all but inside her, but he looks at her and she knows he’ll stop if she asks him to. He drops kisses to her jaw, his body trembling when he whispers, “Tell me you want me to.”

She is all flushed skin beneath him as he begs entrance to her warm, wet cunny. He would beg on his knees, plead to every god he can remember; he would build her an altar and he would worship her—he does, he will, he’ll never stop, he wants wants _wants_ and she is letting him, her limbs entwine with his and she breathes into his ear, _Yes, I want you to_.

The voices in his head scatter, dissipate to nothingness, and hers replaces them all.

Jon’s lips cling to hers, and Sansa sighs into him when he enters her in one slow stroke. Her hips cant up to meet his, once and then twice and then again and again and again… He braces himself on a forearm, his hand tangling in her hair, losing himself in the sensation that is her, all her, only Sansa: soft skin, sharp fingernails, the hammering of her heart against his lips when he tastes her breast. She is tart and sweet and she _wants_ him—

 _“Sansa.”_ He can’t stop saying her name, nothing but _Sansa_ ; it’s tattooed into her flesh, embedded in the thrum of his voice. It is a strained, rough sound, and yet he has never felt such relief, such freedom, than he does when he groans her name into her sweat-slickened neck.

“Jon—” It takes hardly a breath to say his name, but somehow Sansa’s voice breaks in the middle. She arches to meet his quickening thrusts, his measured movements tipping into erraticity because he can’t stop wanting her, can’t control how he needs to have her, and she is meeting him lust for lust.

Her nails dig into his back and he bites her throat. She will mark him as hers and he will do the same— _mine_ , my lady, my love… He would let everyone know, damn the consequences. What could they take from him? What would they take, when she has already given herself to him? He is hers and she _wants_ him and there is nothing in this world that will stop him from holding onto her.

 _I love you_ , he murmurs, and she swallows the words.

The door creaks once more, and Petyr has left them. He has seen Jon Snow’s undoing between his sister’s thighs, in the way he cried out for her when he touched her cunt with fingers and tongue and cock. And Sansa’s frenzied cries—sobbing, sighing, enraptured, _Jon Jon Jon_ —will haunt him for the rest of his days...

Until he is nothing but a ghost himself.


	3. in the wake of a vision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: i can’t believe i thought i could finish this off in three chapters. not a chance, apparently; more to come after this.
> 
> so anyway here’s wonderwall

Bran Stark’s return to Winterfell is a victory cut short when he shares the revelations only the Three-Eyed Raven may be privy to.

_Jon’s not our brother. He’s our cousin. Aunt Lyanna and Rhaegar Targaryen’s son._

His companion, Meera Reed, confirms Bran’s vision with a letter from the last survivor of the battle at the Tower of Joy: her father, Howland Reed. There is no reason for the Northerners to doubt their liege lord’s words, but they cast a shadow over their declared king. In the wake of Winterfell’s reclamation, Ned Stark’s bastard boy had been easy enough to overlook, but how could they trust a Targaryen in their midst?

“Jon’s still a Stark,” Sansa says furiously as she paces the room in which she, Jon, Bran, and Ser Davos have secluded themselves within to discuss the matter. “If our bannermen rallied to Jon Snow, why not to Jon Targaryen as well?”

 _Jon’s still a Stark._ His heavy heart soars at her defense, of her faith in him, and at the brightness of her eyes when they meet his. He wants to be alone in this room with her, so he can show her what she means to him, how she’s holding his world together when it should be falling apart. But there is no time to think too long on any of it, caught in this new crisis as they are.

“Apologies, my lady,” Ser Davos says with a small nod, “but the Mad King had your uncle and grandfather burned during Robert’s Rebellion. The North remembers, as you’ve said yourself before. Rhaegar absconded with your aunt and started the war in the first place—”

“Rhaegar’s doing,” Sansa points out, “not Jon’s.”

“And yet Jon was the result.”

Sansa opens her mouth to retaliate but, in truth, she has nothing to say to that, so she resumes her pacing instead.

“Sansa,” Jon says, and it’s the first word he’s spoken in what feels like an eternity; of course the first thing he can think to say would be her name. Her gaze meets his once more, and he pleads with her to settle. “Please, sit.”

She looks as though she might argue further, but ultimately decides against it. She does not make herself comfortable, rather perching on the edge of her chair like she plans to leap from it again at any moment. Jon will take what he can get.

“Where does this leave us?” he says, turning from Ser Davos to Bran. “There isn’t time to argue with our bannermen. This isn’t the war we need to be fighting right now. You’re the rightful Lord of Winterfell—why not declare yourself king in my stead?”

“They _chose_ you,” Sansa reminds him through gritted teeth. “I won’t deny Bran’s right—” she offers her brother an apologetic look, but he only nods for her to continue— “but the Northern lords chose you to lead for a reason, Jon. You can’t cave to them whenever things don’t turn out exactly as they’d like. They’ve sworn fealty to you—”

“Not to me.” Jon shakes his head. “They swore fealty to Ned Stark’s son.”

“To _you_ , Jon,” Sansa retorts hotly. “You may not be Father’s by blood, but he was more to you than Rhaegar Targaryen ever was or could be. You were raised a Stark, you are of the North and always have been. After all you’ve done, how can they not _trust_ you?”

Her declaration is met with silence, and Jon only wants to be alone with her all the more.

“Targaryen madness is a strong contender to ill faith,” Ser Davos finally says. “Your bannermen remember it all too well. They’ve seen what it does to men. They fear it. It’s not Jon they distrust—it’s the blood in his veins.”

“He’s got Stark blood, too.” Sansa looks nowhere but at Jon. She will make him see—if it’s the last thing she does, she will make him see himself for the man that he truly is. Not Ned Stark’s bastard, not her own half-brother, not Rhaegar Targaryen’s trueborn son—he is Jon, and he has always been enough. No matter how her heart has come to know him since their reunion, that much had always been true. “Winterfell is his, as much as it is mine and Bran’s and Arya’s. The North is his home. He belongs with us.”

Not for the first time and far from the last, Jon meets her eye, and he is in love. It takes little else but the determined glint in her gaze, in the stubborn set of her jaw, in the way she leans so earnestly forward to grasp his hand in her own, and Jon is swept away in a love so fierce and true that he cannot possibly bear it.

“You’re our king,” she tells him, willing him to believe it, “no matter your name.”

Jon squeezes her fingers. “But how can they trust a name they’ve never trusted before?”

“There’s a way,” Bran chimes in before his sister can let loose more indignation on Jon’s behalf. His brow is furrowed in thought, his face lined by a wisdom beyond his young years. “What the Northmen fear is a dissolution of their home. If they bend the knee to a Targaryen now, who’s to say what comes next? Jon is still a Stark by blood, but Rhaegar’s claim to him is just as strong. Perhaps more, as far as the North is concerned. After all, they thought they’d crowned Ned Stark’s son, not a Targaryen’s. They need assurance that Winterfell won’t fall into the wrong hands again. They need an agreement. A vow. An alliance with the name they _do_ trust.”

He looks to his sister. “I’d never force you into something you don’t want, Sansa. Not again. But…”

Sansa nods. “But there’s little else for it. I see it, Bran; you needn’t explain.”

Jon and Davos exchange a look, this one less poignant than the one between the other two, as they’re not quite sure what the siblings are communicating. Sansa holds Jon’s hand tighter and he doesn’t dare hope that Bran is suggesting what his overeager heart yearns for. And yet… What else could it be, but the realization of those hopes? Could he truly be allowed his heart and his honor, never having to sacrifice one for the other again? And all for the good of his family, for the good of their home?

“Sansa,” he says, as though they truly are as alone as he wants them to be. He drowns in the depths of her unwavering gaze, and they could be in another time entirely. “This is your choice. I won’t make you.”

_I want you, but you need to want me, too._

He had come to her chambers and he had lain with her as a husband does his wife—not only the first night, but all those that followed as well. He had taken her tenderly, roughly, he had gotten to know every curve and all her scars, and she had traced his own with fingertips and tongue alike. He had held her without a care as to what anyone would say of them, should they know the way he loves her behind closed doors. For so long, she had been the only thing that mattered, the only thing that would last. And now she might last forever, with him, if only she would say yes.

When the corners of her eyes crinkle in the smallest but surest of smiles, her hand in his is the only anchor tethering him to this world. That smile would have made him float away if she hadn’t been holding him so assuredly here with her.

Here, in the North, at Winterfell. Where he belongs.

Jon says her name again— _Sansa_ , he’ll never tire of it—followed by the question he’d never thought he’d ask, but she had ridden into Castle Black, she had named him _Stark_ no matter what, and she had changed everything, right from the start:

“Will you marry me?”

Her smile could light the longest night, and her answer could bring him back from the most final of deaths:

“Yes.”


	4. underneath the weirwood trees

Sansa had long ago given up on prayer, but she is finding faith in the godswood once more.

Bran sits at the base of the heart tree and he sees all that he needs to condemn Petyr Baelish for his crimes against their family. Ned Stark is dead by the hand of the man’s betrayal, and his family had been unraveling ever since: Lone wolves, searching for their purpose, for their pack, but now the snows had fallen and they had found each other in the storm.

Petyr had been confident—too much so, and all to his detriment. He’d believed so dearly in the seeds of doubt he tried to plant between Jon and Sansa that he hadn’t stopped to consider whether they would truly grow. Instead, he watches the pair exchange vows beneath the very heart tree where Bran had seen his undoing. He will pay his due, little does he know, but first Sansa would have him watch his ambitions die as she pledges herself to another man and the home they will build between them.

Jon Snow might be a Targaryen by blood, but he cloaks Sansa in Stark colors and swears to protect, honor, and love her, as her father had vowed to her mother. The Northerners see the echos of their late lord and lady, and put their renewed faith into the future that Jon and Sansa promise them.

The last time Sansa was here like this, she’d been given away by a prisoner to become one herself. Now, her sister Arya takes her by the arm and walks with her to a true husband and home. Bran declares them wed, and Petyr Baelish is forced to watch the ghosts of his boyhood pledge life and love to one another all over again.

And so he dies twice that day.

That night, it is Jon who takes him by the scruff of his collar and throws him to the stone floor at Sansa’s feet. She is seated to Bran’s right. He is the one to speak, decrying Petyr of his crimes against House Stark in that cool, calm voice of his that could shake the dead if he so chose. Sansa says nothing, but looks upon Petyr with a lift of her chin and cold enmity in her eyes. She will not be gentle, but unmerciful, and her voice rings clear in the hall once her brother has said his piece:

“In the name of House Stark, lords of Winterfell and wardens of the North—” Petyr quivers, almost imperceptibly, but she does not waver so— “I, Sansa Stark, sentence you to die.”

Perhaps she should say something further, something more, but this feels like enough. A cold stare and colder words. Her voice bites like a wolf, and stings like the winter winds. Petyr deserves nothing more.

The hall is silent in the wake of Sansa’s decree. Jon’s boots scrape on the floor as he moves aside, and the echo of lighter footsteps caresses the walls of Winterfell like a lover. Arya steps forward, face shadowed and impassive, but the torchlight catches her eyes and her weapon as she unsheathes Needle from her belt.

“You recognized me,” Arya says coolly. She places her blade beneath Petyr’s chin, at the nervous bob of his throat. “Years ago, at Harrenhal. I was Tywin Lannister’s cupbearer, but you knew who I really was. You said nothing. You left me there. You kept me from my sister.”

Slowly, she draws Needle back and forth across Petyr’s pulse point. She does not strike, not yet, only allows a thin stream of blood to leave his still-breathing body.

“Would you like to answer for that?” Arya asks. “Or should I kill you now?”

In the end, Petyr Baelish can only plead a case long lost. The seeds of doubt he’d tried to plant in the Starks’ midst come to no fruition; instead, they rot in the ground where he’d left them. He splutters and begs, but his manipulations are weak beneath the harsh northern eyes of the family he’d torn apart.

Jon’s gaze is trained on Sansa as hers does not tear from Petyr’s. She will not look away. She will not blink or cower or hide; he has made her do quite enough of that. Now, she will watch as she is rid of him forever.

When the moment comes, Arya kills him quickly, with hardly a sound. She takes his own dagger for her prize.

* * *

Later, while the castle sleeps, Jon fucks his bride into their marriage bed so that the hot springs in the godswood ripple with intensity.

“I love you,” he murmurs, mouth open and hot on her skin as he trails kisses down her throat, her sternum, her stomach. His hands sweep her waist and then latch onto her hips, yanking her forward so he might taste what he does to her on his tongue. “My lady. My _wife_.”

Her fingers curl into his hair to hold him close, but if it were up to him he’d never leave the sweet embrace of her thighs. She tastes of love, of home, of all that he’d long given up hope of having—but she had stepped back into his life and given it all to him when she gave herself. There is still a war waiting to be fought outside Winterfell’s walls, but Jon will come back to her when it’s done. She has given him something to fight for, to win for, to come home to, and he will not leave her alone at the end of it all.

He will not fall at the hands of any enemy, not while his family awaits his return.

 _“Sansa.”_ Jon whispers her name into her skin, over and over and over again, for she is his and he can scarcely believe it.

 _“Jon.”_ Sansa recites his name like a prayer, for he is hers and she has never known a blessing such as this.

He is gentle but thorough. His lips meet hers and their moans tangle with their tongues. She tastes like salvation, he tastes like sweet relief, and they move together like a dream—dreams they had lost or otherwise abandoned, until their gazes had locked and their hands found each other. With one meeting in a courtyard, they had come home in little else but their arms around the other. His heart had gone wild for her, and hers had found calm in the squeeze of his fingers in hers.

He will leave on the morrow to wage war on those who would do them harm. She will wait for him, however long it takes for him to come back to Winterfell, to their kingdom, to her.

“I love you,” she promises on a gasp when he enters her. Her nails bite into his shoulder and his waist, and his teeth bite into her neck. They litter their skin with bruises and marks, remembrances of their last night together— _together_ , where they will return when all is said and done. They had found each other for a reason, all those moons ago, and neither shall rest until the other is once more safe in their arms.

Once, Sansa had come to him for protection, a safe haven; now she finds freedom in the way that he loves her, and in the way that she can love him in return.

* * *

While Jon is away at war, Sansa writes a hundred letters to keep him warm. She signs the last of them with the Stark words: _When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies…_ , and seals it with her love, and the faith that he will not leave this world behind.

When he comes home to her—as she’d known he would, for Jon always comes back—he takes her up in his arms and murmurs into the sweet curve of her neck, “But the pack survives.”

And he never lets her go again.


End file.
